A Pie in the Sky

Here are my thoughts for this Sunday's sermon. The text is Isaiah 9:1-4.

MAIN IDEA – It is difficult to preach about hope in a real way to people who are suffering. How does one suggest that things will get better when things are in a state of crap? How does one suggest that things will get better when in your own life things are difficult and seemingly lost? Again and again we find words of hope, but what does it offer that is real? I don’t want to start reading signs and stars and say that when someone dropped a dollar in front of me that is God helping me. That is shallow. Or that the prayer someone says for me is God helping me. How does that make a difference when my children are starving?

If I leave my comfortable, Western, middle class life, I have to look at the very real fact that people in this world assume that some of their children will not live to adulthood. There are people who assume that they will be bombed or ravaged by war and violence. There are people who struggle to live just because who they are. There are people who struggle and I’m supposed to preach about hope? It seems empty and shallow at best, cruel at worst.

Even now, making the turn to hope is a difficult thing when being honest. I’m expected to make the turn, but I don’t know if I can with authenticity. My desire is that I can hope in the promise and trust of God. My desire is to believe, Lord help my unbelief.

You said that people who walked in darkness have and will see a great light. Are you going to let the rest of the world see that light?

THEOLOGICAL IDEA – this evokes the hope of the resurrection. In every case, the worst that can happen is death. A child struggles, but hope is held to until the child dies and then it is assumed that all is lost. The crucifixion and the resurrection show us the way that the yoke has been broken. When we embrace the hope of the resurrection (a hope that goes beyond any sense of substitutionary atonement) then we can read the passage of Isaiah with the promise of God ringing in our hearts?